Bandai Namco Increasing Games in Development for Switch

Expect more Switch titles down the line from the prominent publisher

Bandai Namco held a financial briefing recently which spotlighted an admitted mistake on behalf of the publisher. The company’s President, Mitsuaki Taguchi, confirmed that they didn’t see the Nintendo Switch’s success coming.

In a quote translated via The Wall Street Journal, Taguchi stated that Bandai Namco didn’t expect the Switch to be so popular so soon. “It’s a shame”, Taguchi said, “but we didn’t think the Switch would be accepted this fast.” It’s clear at this point that Bandai Namco truly miscalculated. The Switch is officially a hit.

Super Mario Odyssey is selling at a historic rate for the Mario franchise. And Nintendo announced that the Switch is outperforming even their own expectations. The console/portable hybrid has sold through 14 million units in a little over six months.

Bandai Namco wants to jump into this success pool, obviously. Taguchi promised investors that Bandai Namco plans to increase the number of games in development for the Switch. To date, the publisher has only released three games onto the platform. However, Taguchi stated that all had performed well for them.

The portfolio is pretty varied as far as options for Nintendo Switch games from Bandai Namco. There have long been rumors of possible Dark Souls ports heading over to the Switch. There are also a slew of upcoming games that are currently only poised to release on other platforms.

Amongst those games are Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, set for release on January 19th on PlayStation 4 and PC. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is slated for a 2018 release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. And also in January comes Dragon Ball FighterZ for everything but Switch. And 2018 also looks to release the vampire centric Code Vein onto other systems than Switch.

There are also plenty of recent releases that Bandai Namco could mine for Switch gold. Tekken 7 just launched over the summer to great success. And the Japanese only City Shrouded in Shadow could be a great addition to the Switch library.

Regardless of what does and doesn’t come, it’s a no-brainer that Bandai Namco deciding to increase Switch support is a great thing for the console’s owners. However, we’ll just have to wait and see whether they do the system justice, or attempt some quick and cheap ports for a easy cash in. Let’s hope it’s the former.